Embracing Self-Kindness: Dr. Kristen Neff on the Life-Changing Power of Self-Compassion

Let's chat about self-compassion with the scientist that created the self-compassion scale herself!

Today, I am joined by Dr. Kristen Neff, Tedx speaker and author of Self-Compassion: The proven power of being kind to yourself. Leading expert in self-compassion, Dr. Neff walks us through what it means to be self-compassion and how we can start with baby steps to be kinder to ourselves.

I remember being a first time mom and how I had so much guilt around everything I did with my daughter. Our inner dialogue can be so tough on us, while on the other hand, we offer a nurturing hand to our friends. I know I am not alone in this because many moms and dads have shared these struggles with me.

If you are ready to be kinder to yourself and to see this impact on your mental health and physical health, then take 47 min to listen to this powerful conversation! '

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Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, my dear friend, welcome back to another episode of the Curious Neuron podcast. My name is Cindy Huffington and I am your host. Today we have an extremely special episode and guest. We have Dr Kristen Neff, who's joining us, and I'm going to share who she is If you don't know who she is. She is the person who came up with the theoretical framework and the scale for self-compassion. So anything I talk about here, whether it's on social media or the podcast, is usually from her work or from her book when it comes to self-compassion. So I had a lot of questions for her. I loved her book so much and I think that you will as well. I will put the link to her book, to her website. As she says in the interview, she also has a community that she's launching. Everything you need will be in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 0:47

Before I begin, as always, I do want to thank the Tannenbaum Open Science Institute and the McConnell Foundation for supporting the Curious Noun podcast. By supporting, I mean they allow me to continue this podcast. I get some support to get an editor, a video editor, an audio editor, some help in marketing, and all of that is important. Without any of this, I would not be able to continue the podcast. So thank you to both of these organizations and thank you for listening, because they fund me based on if you leave a review, a rating, and if you download the podcast and you are subscribed. So if you do all of those things, then that is allowing me to continue what I absolutely love doing, especially with conversations like I had today. You know these were.

Speaker 1: 1:30

This was one of those interviews where I just could not believe that I got a response. Dr Kristen Neff to me is up there with Dr Bruce Perry and Dr Mark Brackett. These are some of the interviews that just mark me and I am so grateful that I get to have these conversations with these phenomenal researchers and experts like Dr Kristen Neff. I don't want to keep you waiting any longer because the conversation was just so wonderful, so let's move on to who Dr Neff is, in case you haven't heard of her.

Speaker 1: 2:02

She is the author of the book called Self-Compassion the Proven Power of being Kind to Yourself, and she received her doctorate degree from the University of California at Berkeley and did two years of postdoctoral studies at the University of Denver, where she studied self-concept development. She's the one who created the self-compassion scale. So I mean as somebody who was in science, the person who created a scale that's huge, but just to say she truly is an amazing person and practices what she preaches. As you will see in our conversation, she has a TEDx talk as well. Everything will be in the show notes. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. I will see you on the other side. Hello everyone, welcome back. As I said at the beginning, I'm here with a very special guest today Dr Kristen Neff. Welcome.

Speaker 2: 2:56

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 2:58

We're so excited to have you. We are an audience of parents and many parents have read your book and many parents feel that it helped guide them, Because when we become a parent, it seems as if that self-criticism piece gets louder and gets very difficult and very challenging. Before we get into that, I would love to share with the audience a bit of who you are and your work, and you know I was looking through the research and did I miss something? Did we start talking about self-compassion in 2003 or around that time?

Speaker 2: 3:30

Well, that's when I published the first paper on it. So I mean the idea of self-compassion I certainly didn't invent. I learned about it when I started learning about mindfulness meditation. But I was the first one to at least you know, least operationally define and publish a theoretical definition and a skill to measure it in 2003.

Speaker 1: 3:51

Why do you think it took that long? I think it's such an important concept for us to apply in our lives and for research as well.

Speaker 2: 4:01

Yeah, well, I think people are more focused on self-esteem and actually.

Speaker 2: 4:05

I had done my post doctoral study with a self-esteem researcher and the field of psychology was getting kind of fed up with self-esteem and they were starting to talk about like unconditional self-worth, which in some ways self-compassion is a form of unconditional self-worth. But instead of talking about am I worthy or not, I just thought it's not about am I worthy or not. I just thought it's not about are you worthy or not. It's like are you a good friend to yourself when you're hurting? That's to me, the most important question.

Speaker 1: 4:31

Yes, can we perhaps give the audience a definition of what we mean when we say self-compassion?

Speaker 2: 4:36

Yeah, absolutely. And so if you look at the Latin, the word passion is to suffer and calm is with. So it refers to how are we with suffering? Compassion is to suffer and calm is with. So it refers to how are we with suffering? Normally we think of it how we're compassionate to others. So when a good friend is upset, are we there for them? Do we support them? Are we understanding? Are we kind? Are we kind of harsh, cold and judgmental? And so really it's the same thing with ourselves. How are we with ourselves when we're struggling? Are we warm? Are we kind? Are we supportive? Are we understanding, or are we harsh, cold and judgmental? So it's simply just compassion turned inward.

Speaker 2: 5:14

And in my model of self-compassion, the one I published back in 2003, I also propose that there are three main components to self-compassion. So the kindness is there, that's, in a way, the most obvious part of it. But mindfulness is also part of self-compassion. In other words, you need to be willing to turn toward and acknowledge that you're struggling, that you're hurting. You have to do it with some space and balance. So if you ignore it and just kind of stiff up a little bit, you know, nope, not a problem, you can't keep yourself compassion. On the other hand, if you're sucked into what's happening and you can't like you're totally overwhelmed by what's happening, then you have no space to step out of yourself and say you know, what do you need right now? So you need mindfulness.

Speaker 2: 5:58

And then also, I was really focused on how to differentiate self-compassion from self-pity, because self-pity isn't really healthy and really the difference is other people. So compassion is a connected way of being. If I pity you, cindy, it's like I feel sorry for you. If I have compassion for you, I say oh, I've been there. So what makes compassion compassion is the sense of everyone's human. Everyone goes through. What they go through is the sense of everyone's human. Everyone goes through. You know, what they go through is different, but everyone struggles in their own way, some more than others, but everyone struggles, everyone makes mistakes. And so, with self-compassion, we frame our experience of difficulty in light of the shared human experience. And so, from my point of view, all three elements really need to be there in order for this to be a healthy, stable mindset, but they tend to go together.

Speaker 1: 6:48

As you're describing this. I'm picturing conversations I've had with my friends when they were struggling that I would express that kindness and that sort of feeling of you're not alone. I've gone through this, many parents have gone through this as well, but when it comes to the self, it's not the same and it's so hard and, as I said at the beginning, from the parents that I've spoken with for the past couple of years through Curious Neuron, it's something that they struggle with so much, where we make a mistake or we feel that we're not perfect enough for our children and we get stuck in these cycles of criticism and judgment when is this coming from? Many parents question like what is this voice that I'm hearing in my head? Where is it coming from? Is it my childhood? And some parents say things like I had a good childhood, so I don't know where it's coming from and I can't figure it out, so I don't know if I can fix this, so where is?

Speaker 2: 7:41

all this coming from. So it's handed down by evolution, right? So basically, when we are personally threatened by evolution, we're designed to go into fight, flight or freeze mode. And when the threat is ourselves, because we've made a mistake or we've done something that maybe would harm our child, we try to either fight the problem, which means beating ourselves up, kind of getting ourselves in line and you know that sense of control when you, when you know you've done something wrong, you have that sense of well, at least I can control myself. Or we flee into a sense of shame and isolation. We kind of metaphorically like hide from the fellow group members, or we freeze and we get stuck. That's why the voice goes around and around in our head. It's like we're freezing.

Speaker 2: 8:23

Now, when your good friend makes a mistake, you aren't so personally threatened, so you're able to tap into the system which is actually the systems that parents tap into for their children, and that's the care system. There's a whole different physiology in terms of the neurochemicals that are released. The sympathetic versus parasympathetic nervous system is different. But basically care comes more naturally to others by evolution and this is designed so that we take care of our kids and we take care of our fellow group members. So we are doing a little bit of a hack with self-compassion. We're doing something that's not totally natural, comes natural for others and we're starting to treat ourselves as a friend or someone we really care about, like a good family member.

Speaker 2: 9:11

And the nice thing is is the body doesn't really know the difference, right. So if you put your own hand on your heart, your body relaxes the way it would if someone else put their hand on your shoulder. But it's not totally natural and that's why we need to make it a practice and a habit. But the good news is is it's not hard, it's not rocket science. You already know how to do it for others. You just have to remember and give yourself permission to do it for yourself. Then you you know what to do, you know what to say. You've done it a million times before in your life for other people.

Speaker 1: 9:44

That word just stands out to me to give yourself permission, right. I feel that that's a really powerful word because I feel that we don't give ourselves permission often as parents, and that's what adds to everything, right, even with parents taking time for themselves and kind of filling up their cup and realizing that they need to step back a little bit, there's a lot of shame and guilt around that and they don't want to give themselves permission for that. But that self-compassion piece and all of this is so important for our well-being.

Speaker 2: 10:15

It is Well so, as if evolution wasn't hard enough in terms of why we criticize ourself. Culture. This is where culture steps in. Yes, our culture gives us messages and I must say especially women, but all caregivers that we're supposed to be self-sacrificing, that we should always put our children first. Of course, what that doesn't recognize is that if you self-sacrifice and put your children first and you give and you give and compassion flows outward and not inward, you'll burn out. You'll have nothing left to give. So unless you resource yourself, you know you aren't going to have the ability to be compassionate to your child and you're also modeling for your child that, oh okay. Self-criticism and self-denial is a healthy way to be, which it's not. Research shows. And also there are myths like it's going to make you less motivated. We really think it's interesting. Luckily, parenting has changed. It used to be in parenting circles the idea was spare the rod, spoil the child.

Speaker 2: 11:17

You needed to be harsh, critical, harsh discipline to get your child not to be spoiled and a lazy good for nothing. And now we know that. Healthy boundaries, yes, but also support, encouragement. I believe in you. How can I help you? What can we do differently to enable you to succeed? We know that's actually more effective motivator for our children, but yet we still operate on the old principle with ourselves. We think if we're supportive to ourself that we'll be lazy. It's just the opposite. So self-criticism, it kind of works, just like yelling at your kid kind of works, but it has negative consequences like fear of failure, performance anxiety. So there's a ton of research that shows it's more effective to motivate change If you say things like okay, it's human to make mistakes.

Speaker 2: 12:06

What can I learn from this? This is how we learn. We fail, we make mistakes, we learn, we grow, we change. You know that it's nothing wrong with me for making a mistake, I'm only human. But you don't leave it there. If you care. You say you know well, what do I need to do differently next time? And then it gives you the emotional resources to make those changes.

Speaker 1: 12:26

I know that our culture doesn't tell us so that's why I'm here to try to say it ain't true, it ain't so you know this falls self-compassion and, for myself, I studied emotions and mental health during my PhD, so for me, there's just so much around our our wellbeing and emotions and our and the way we think of ourselves that I feel should be part of these courses that we take when we become a parent, because, you know, it's important for us to learn how to hold a baby, sure, but in addition to that, I think the way that we think in these moments of pressure or these difficult, challenging moments can really shape how we parent our child and how stressed we feel during certain moments. So I think your work is just so important around this.

Speaker 2: 13:09

Yeah, and it's so important for parents for a few reasons. One, because it just helps reduce stress and you'll function better, but also in terms of your kids. So there's two ways that we impart compassion to others. So there's two ways that we impart compassion to others. One is modeling. So if you can model out loud for your child what a self-compassionate response to a mistake or failure looks like, you've really given your child an important life skill. But also non-verbally right, because the way empathy works is we can feel each other's emotions.

Speaker 2: 13:42

Through the way our brains are structured, you know we're designed to pre-verbally feel what other people are feeling. That's why when your child's upset, you feel upset. You know it's just we're wired that way. And when you're stressed and you're upset or you're really frustrated, even if you don't say anything, your child can sense it through their brain, through their mirror neurons or whether or not they're actual mirror neurons A lot of the brain is devoted toward empathic resonance and so what you cultivate inside is actually communicated to your children. And so when you cultivate especially after making a mistake or failing when you cultivate a warm, supportive, encouraging growth mindset internally, your child picks up on that. And if you're critical and cold towards yourself. Your child also picks up on that.

Speaker 2: 14:34

So for instance, my son Rowan is autistic and you know he was. It was slow to develop language and I used to regulate his emotions by regulating my own. So if he had a big tantrum, for instance, maybe I couldn't reach him verbally because he was just in his tantrum. But if I got frustrated because he was tantruming, then he would just get more frustrated. So when I could give myself compassion, I'd put my hands on my heart or I'd soothe myself and say I'm here for you, kristen, and I'd kind of calm down my mindset. I'd become more loving internally. He resonated with that and that would help him calm down. So it's really the best gift we can give our kids.

Speaker 1: 15:17

I'm thinking of also moments of distress that I had with my three kids and the more frustrated I get with them, it's as if it builds on their like. Their frustration gets higher and higher. So I could really understand what you're saying, because and I think a lot of parents could resonate with that because if we can help ourselves stay calm, it's almost like we're that calm for our child. Is this what we hear about in terms of co-regulation and and just helping that child come down?

Speaker 2: 15:43

Yes, absolutely. Because again, we have this empathic system where, especially parents and children, because they're so close, we're feeding off each other's mind state and emotional state. So you really have to pay attention to what is your own mind state like, right, and if you are loving and if you embody kind of presence and calm and warmth and a feeling of connectedness, your children will benefit from that. Again, regardless of what you're saying externally, a lot of it is just your embodied presence, right, I'm wondering now. Plus, it also resources you. So that's like the bonus, that's true. Not to mention the fact that when you give yourself compassion for I'm so overwhelmed because my child is tantruming it also helps resources you so you aren't so drained. So it's really just win-win for everyone.

Speaker 1: 16:29

And that last sentence that you just said, I think is so important as the internal dialogue, right, because I'm thinking of difficult situations. You know, if we're at the store and our child has a tantrum or bedtime, bedtime routines are very chaotic for some parents and they just go into it with a mindset of here we go again. You know, like I know exactly what's going to happen, who won't want to brush their teeth, who won't want to take their bath. And I do think that when we approach it very differently and shift that sort of mindset that we have, it changes how we approach our kids and how we respond to them yeah, it does, and they're very sensitive to it.

Speaker 2: 17:03

it's very subtle cues that aren't even spoken verbally. They can feel our internal mindset. So taking care of our internal mindset is really important, and it does change our behavior as well. Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 17:19

So OK, if a parent is listening to this and saying I need to start working on this, I am that parent that says here we go again. How do you start the work? I know you've alluded before to the fact that we can work on this and we can make changes. Where can a parent start?

Speaker 2: 17:34

Yeah, so luckily, self-compassion is a learnable skill, so it doesn't come entirely naturally. Our culture doesn't advise it at least it didn't used to and evolution our physiology tends towards self-criticism, just by the way we're wired. But because it's not difficult and here's the important thing because we have the template of compassion for others, towards friends or family members, it's really just a matter of finding ways to remember. Well, the first thing is to give yourself permission to be self-compassionate. If you're still thinking, it's going to make you lazy and unmotivated and you know indulgent or irresponsible and, by the way, the research just proves all that.

Speaker 2: 18:15

But if you don't give yourself permission, you aren't even going to get off the ground floor. But maybe you realize, okay, okay, I'm convinced by the research, or at least it makes logical sense. I'll give it a try. There's so many ways in, so it may be hard immediately to just be compassionate to yourself, but you can think either. What would I say to someone I really cared about right now, who is in the exact same situation I was in? So maybe you know what would I say to my friend who says I go crazy when my kids are you know, they can't brush their teeth. And you probably wouldn't say, oh, it's because you're a bad mom. At least I hope you wouldn't.

Speaker 2: 18:49

You know, you'd probably say something like well, of course, you know it happens to everyone. You know you might even give some advice if they ask for it. Okay, well, maybe we can do something about how you do the routine, or maybe there's some other technique you could try. Or it's just a phase and they'll grow out of it. I mean, there's lots of things we know naturally to say to friends.

Speaker 2: 19:13

So you can imagine what would my most wise, compassionate self say to a friend. Imagine what would my most wise, compassionate self say to a friend and then say that to yourself. Or the other thing you can do is you can imagine maybe you know someone who's really wise and compassionate, like maybe your parents or your grandparents are like that. You might say what would that person say to me? Or you might have like some imaginary figures. You know Some imaginary figures.

Speaker 2: 19:36

You know the most ideally wise, compassionate parenting coach out there. What would they say? You know the things we can think of what they would say. We can imagine it because we have those skills inside of us. And then you use that as a way to relate to yourself and it feels a little awkward at first. I'm not going to lie, it does, because we aren't used to it. But eventually, you know, we start to like let it in a little bit more, because there is a part of ourselves that's compassionate. We just usually don't listen to it when it comes to ourselves. We only listen to it when it's aimed at other people.

Speaker 1: 20:11

It's true. I wonder, are there any phrases that we can say to ourself? We catch ourselves in that moment and we're trying to practice being our friend and speaking to ourselves that way. But if we catch ourselves in that moment of self-criticism, what can we do to quickly switch that over?

Speaker 2: 20:28

So I've developed a whole suite of things called the self-compassion breaks and we have them designed for different types of circumstances. But a self-compassion break is just a way of bringing in explicitly the three components of self-compassion, starting with mindfulness. So remember, noticing yeah, this is hard, in other words, turning toward the discomfort Instead of focused on problem-solving, which is focused on making the discomfort go away. Turning toward the discomfort and just acknowledging this is hard, this doesn't feel good. That's mindfulness Remembering that you aren't alone. This is part of life or it's part of being a parent. That's remembering your common humanity.

Speaker 2: 21:10

And then you bring in some words of kindness, not only words, but it can be very helpful to use physical touch Again, because physiology is involved in this. So the care system is involved with the parasympathetic nervous system activity. The whole way our infants, before they learn to speak, know that we care is because we touch them a certain way, with a certain quality of soothing and support and caring. You can actually put your own hands on your heart or your face or hold yourself in a way that lets your body know I'm here for you, I care about you, and that can be a way to calm down your physiology first, which then allows the mind to follow. So supportive touch and then also just any words of kindness, warm support, and remembering that this doesn't mean we lie to ourselves.

Speaker 2: 21:58

It's not like we say, oh don't worry, you just snapped at your kids and made them cry, it happens to everyone. Well, it does happen to everyone, but you aren't going to say it's not a problem. If it is a problem, right, that's not kind. So, yeah, it's a problem, it happens to everyone. What can I do next time? You know what triggered me. You know how might I approach this differently. Or maybe I need to go have a word with my child to let them know that, yeah, mommy's human and snapped, but she still loves you know, whatever. So it's not sugarcoating reality, because that's not compassionate. It's giving honest feedback, but in a caring, supportive way, understanding that we're only human. You know, we're just doing the best we can moment to moment, and so we work with ourselves as opposed to against ourselves, and it's actually much more effective.

Speaker 1: 22:48

I love that you just said that. I think it's important that we address that self-compassion is not about just saying, well, I yelled at my colleague, or you know, I'm only human. Well, I yelled at my husband today, or my know, I'm, I'm only human, while I yelled at my husband today or my wife, I'm only human. I think it's really important that we say that, because as I speak to people about self-compassion, sometimes I get that sort of pushback of like what does that mean exactly? Just like accepting everything you do, even if it's wrong, not you know. So that it's important that you, you, uh, that we bring that up as well.

Speaker 2: 23:18

Yeah, so we accept ourselves but not our behaviors, and we can separate them. So I'm unconditionally worthy, even though I make mistakes. But my mistakes could use some work to kind of separate ourselves from our behaviors.

Speaker 2: 23:32

There's something that I like to call fierce and tender self-compassion. So tender self-compassion is about acceptance. It's about unconditionally accepting our self-worth, even though we're flawed human beings, and accepting that sometimes our emotions are uncomfortable. Can we just be with that? But the fierce self-compassion is about taking action and it's more aimed at behaviors and situations. What do we need to do to alleviate suffering? You know, and we can separate those things. Just because what you said was not okay doesn't mean that you aren't okay. Right?

Speaker 1: 24:07

You know, yes, the physical touch piece.

Speaker 1: 24:11

As I was reading your book you know I've done that before where I placed my hands on my heart, but you talk about kind of like hugging ourselves too in some parts in a part of your book, and I remember the first time I was like I don't know if I should do this, let me give it a try.

Speaker 1: 24:25

And I kind of fell into it. I don't know how I that's the only way I could explain it. Like the same way you would fall into a hug when somebody gives you a hug and you're like, oh, I needed this so badly and the feeling was beyond. It made me feel very emotional. I was like why haven't I hugged myself before? So I just want to thank you for bringing in that physical piece and mentioning that it's going to be awkward and, as you did. Now, right, that physical piece is not something we're used to doing, but it just. I want to bring it up because maybe somebody listening to this might say like I don't need to place my hands over my heart, but it does something to us, it feels good.

Speaker 2: 25:03

It changes your physiology is what it does, and that when you downregulate the sympathetic nervous system reaction, it's actually easier to be calm and to make wise decisions. And if that's just too awkward, you know you can pet your cat, but with the intention to soothe yourself, not just to soothe your cat. And so there's.

Speaker 2: 25:23

You know, people are different, things work differently for different people, so I encourage everyone to find their own form of touch that authentically feels good and supportive and soothing, but it really it does, because instead of our brains trying to solve the problem, you know, with thinking about it or maybe saying something, even it's just our bodies know we're cared for and then okay, I could relax, I feel safe.

Speaker 1: 25:47

Yes, it's so important. You know, I'm thinking of a lot of schools now are bringing in, you know, social, emotional learning and talking about the importance of this, and I see it as, yes, that is important. And, in addition to that, what's important is that we learn a lot more about ourselves and that we could be doing a lot better when it comes to understanding ourselves. Before we understand empathy for others, we should be developing the empathy for ourselves. What do you think is missing in our society, given the research that you've been doing is missing in our society, given the research that you've been doing? What are we missing here in society in terms of educating our kids and supporting our parents, for instance?

Speaker 2: 26:25

Yeah, I mean, I think it is slowly starting to change. But I can tell you, I used to teach a big undergraduate class in self-compassion and mindfulness and almost every student said this is the most important class I've taken while while at my college. Right, you know, just because these skills are so impactful and yet no one teaches them to you, if anything. You know, society kind of tells you the opposite, that it's good to just drive yourself mercilessly or be a perfectionist or hard on yourself. Right, you know? I do think it's. It is slowly starting to change, but it just takes everyone to pitch in because these are unwritten rules. And so to change unwritten rules, we need to be aware, first of all, that we've been taught these messages and say, actually, I don't think so.

Speaker 2: 27:15

You know, but I think it's really going to have to be a bottom-up change. I don't think like the government can come out with. Okay, everyone needs to learn self-compassion. What's going to have to happen is people will realize how much more effective it is. And really, at the end of the day, it's all about being effective and being healthy and being well, and you know what doesn't work and what does work, and this works. It works a lot better than shaming ourselves or relentlessly criticizing ourselves. But I do think that it'd be really helpful to have some explicit teaching of this in the schools.

Speaker 2: 27:49

Imagine if you had learned this in middle school, especially when, like you're so self-conscious and you know all the social stuff and it's so painful. Imagine if people had taught you. You know it's okay to be human. It's okay to make mistakes. You know to be a good friend to yourself. That as you learn to be a good friend, you should also include yourself and ask am I being a good friend to myself and if no, how might I be a better friend to myself? Again, it's not that difficult.

Speaker 1: 28:15

I think that was the most common note that I had while I was reading your book was imagine if we did this as a society, how it would change. Those are my thoughts. Exercises, because something like um, at one point you talk about like if we we tend to have to see the how unique we are and how different we are from others. But what if we change that and started educating kids in preschool and saying, how are you similar to your friend sitting beside you, right? Like I just keep wondering, even the whole everything you just said now about being in school and and learning, not to you know, I know you have to be the best or not, that I know, but we say this to kids right, be the best, be hard on yourself so that you achieve more and more. And what if we switched all of that? I can't imagine how beautiful this would be as a society. All that stress would be gone Not gone, but would be reduced.

Speaker 2: 29:07

So we kind of use self-worth as like a carrot. We use the carrot and stick approach. If you achieve, if you look a certain way, if you get certain grades, if you get into this college, then you'll be worthy, and if you don't, you aren't worthy. You know the fact of it, at least the way I look at it is every human being is unconditionally worthy. Now again, there's some of their behaviors maybe could use a little work, you know so, not all behaviors are created equal and it's certainly not harming people, but it's like everyone. The baseline is unconditional worthiness. And then how we express our uniqueness. Well, that's where the beauty comes in. I mean, it's beautiful, it's amazing. Every single person has a unique profile of strengths and weaknesses that they bring into the world. It makes things interesting. But really getting rid of the notion that we have to earn our right to be worthy, you know, because we are a human being on this planet who feels, who loves, who tries, who hurts, this is where our worth comes from. When a baby is born I mean, if you've, you've been in a hospital we don't say to those babies okay, once you go to graduate school you're going to be worthy, like, instinctually, just our very humanity is worthy of care. And also the one we're with 24 seven is ourselves. So if we don't care for ourselves, who are we getting care for? And again, all of this isn't to negate that we, of course we want to achieve our goals.

Speaker 2: 30:37

So, for instance, we taught self-compassion to NCAA athletes. And so, at the college level, second best isn't good enough. You might lose your scholarship, you might. You, maybe you want to go to the pros and maybe it's your whole life, so you want to be number one. But if you can detach your worth as a person from that goal like, why do you want to be number one? Do you want to be number one so that you care about yourself? Or do you want to be number one because you love the sport, let's say, and you really want to be good at it and you want to be the best you can be?

Speaker 2: 31:09

It comes from a place of care as opposed to shame. If you aren't number one, you'll be not worthy. And what we found is when athletes started adopting this mindset, so unhook their sense of self-worth from their performance. But still, for an athlete, the most compassionate thing you can do for an athlete is give them, give them good, informative feedback about how to improve the game. That's what really is caring, and so we use self-compassion as a way for them to give themselves the most clear, useful, constructive feedback they could, as if they were this amazing coach, and we found that self-compassion improved their athletic performance.

Speaker 2: 31:49

Wow so you know if you aren't letting yourself off the hook. You're just changing the reasons why you want to excel. And the beauty of that is let's take athletics. You've all seen it. You blow the game and then you start going in this downward spiral because you start thinking, oh, I'm a failure. And then you blow the game more and then just down and down you go.

Speaker 2: 32:08

But if you say, okay, I made a mistake, hey, it happens, it's part of being an athlete or it's part of being a human. What can I learn from it? What can I do different next time? So you take the self-worth out of it and you just focus on how can I maximally achieve my goal, which is to be the best athlete I can be or best parent I can be, or whatever it is your goal is. Then it gives you so many more resources to focus on achieving your goal. It takes a lot of time and energy to shame and blame yourself and it's not helpful for you achieving your goal. I mean, it sounds so obvious and yet isn't it interesting how we weren't? We aren't taught this.

Speaker 1: 32:44

I love what you just said and I think it really does apply to us as parents, and even parents who want to keep doing better at work and in their careers. I think they attach themselves to that and then not getting that raise that you anticipated leads to the downward spiral that you spoke about. Right, because, like, what did I do wrong? Why do I do this? Why can I do better at work? And it's hard to get out of that.

Speaker 2: 33:06

But detaching yourself is really a really beautiful way of seeing that, and the place to start is by giving yourself compassion for the pain of that, because we all do it.

Speaker 2: 33:17

So don't blame yourself. Now for blaming yourself, it's like, okay, all right, I do do this. There's lots of very good evolutionary and cultural reasons why and just getting in touch with the herd of it right, remembering that you aren't alone, everyone does it. But because you care, you know how might I try something different to see if it can help myself and help you know, if you, when you help yourself. So it's, and that's that's the good news. It's amazing, actually. Even people like with horrific early family trauma, they can learn to be self-compassionate about what they experienced. They can learn to meet their own needs, even if maybe their needs weren't met by the people who should have. It is absolutely a learnable skill, but it's not going to come on its own. You do have to put some practice in because of the and cultural and evolutionary reasons why it's challenging.

Speaker 1: 34:14

Well, I'm glad that you brought that up, because some parents will tell me well, I experienced some trauma or some early childhood adversities. Is there hope for me? Can I change the way that I'm thinking about myself? So you've just addressed that and I'm glad you did.

Speaker 2: 34:28

Yeah, absolutely. Now I will say that sometimes it can be a little scary to be self-compassionate. It's almost like you're activating the care system for yourself. And if in your childhood the people who cared for you were actually abusive or really harsh or mean, then it can feel especially uncomfortable. And there's a term we have called backdraft. It's like you know the firefighting term. If you just let in, open the doors and let the air into the fire, it'll ignite and the flames will rush out. And it can feel like that sometimes because we give ourselves unconditional love and immediately remember all the conditions under which we weren't loved. So that's natural, it happens right. So it just means going slowly. You know, allow yourself to be a slow learner.

Speaker 2: 35:14

If it ever starts to be overwhelming, kind of pulling back, you know again, instead of putting your hands on your heart. Maybe petting your cat is a place to start if it's too activating, but absolutely, especially with the help of a therapist. It's interesting. What the research is suggesting now is that's kind of what defines good therapy is helping people be more self-compassionate, no matter what approach you use. But a therapist who is a little more objective, it can give you that external sense of support. Then you start modeling. What would my therapist say and that's partly how you internalize the lessons of therapy is by modeling, and therapists a good therapist is compassionate.

Speaker 1: 35:52

I started journaling about a year and a half two years ago now and I noticed that it really helps me come out of a situation, to reflect on it and maybe notice moments when I wasn't self-compassion or notice things that I could have done differently. Is there any research around journaling and helping you kind of notice these things?

Speaker 2: 36:11

Yeah, there's a lot of research on. Sometimes it's called expressive writing, but also journaling. It plays two functions. One function that you mentioned is it gives you some more perspective, right? So when you write about it you're kind of a little more objective and it's not so immediate, but it also has a really important expressive function. So just being able to do something like the physical act of writing, expressing your emotions through this form, it's almost like digesting your food. It allows you to digest the emotions, it's true, but it's a good analogy. It allows you to digest them more deeply when you write about them. It doesn't work for everyone, but for some people who like writing, it can be a very useful way to work with the difficult emotions and think about them and have more perspective.

Speaker 1: 36:56

And that's great, interesting. So I know that parents now that are listening. You've given us quite a few tips and I think it's important for us to have those actionable tips and also anybody who's watching on YouTube or listening. I really highly recommend your book Self-Compassion. There are exercises that anybody can apply and start working on and journal about or just try, so it's a great place to start, and your website as well. You have activities that we can do there and meditations, right.

Speaker 2: 37:23

Yeah, I've got a lot of free recorded practices and meditations and I'm actually starting a new self-compassion community. It's a membership where we'll have access to even more practices, but we'll have mentor sessions. So if you want to have a group and get a little mentoring by a trained self-compassion teacher, gatherings with me. We've got video, workshops, snippets, forums, workshops, snippets, forums. In other words, it's going to be a whole ecosystem designed to strengthen people's or help people practice self-compassion, which is launching soon. I'm really excited about it because it's such an important life-changing skill and not everyone wants to read a book or take a long course.

Speaker 2: 38:05

So just finding little ways to practice is what I'm after Easy ways to practice.

Speaker 1: 38:11

Is it targeting just adults, or I'm thinking the teenagers you mentioned before?

Speaker 2: 38:16

Well, that's a good question. So we aren't targeting teenagers, we aren't excluding anyone based on age. Okay, good. So there are people who've developed. Like we developed the Mindful Self-Compassion Program for adults and we have a teen version of the program, the way you approach teens or children, additionally, is a little different. It has to be a little more fun. Right, I get it. Maybe not so focused on suffering.

Speaker 2: 38:41

Yes, you approach it a little differently, and so my website isn't doing that, although one of those may spring up, because teens, once they get the concepts, they really love it. It's such a relief when you really realize, okay, I can just be a compassionate mess, I don't have to be perfect, I can be a mess, as long as I'm compassionate about it, that's what counts. You're really shifting your focus from trying to fix everything not that you stop trying to improve, but the focus is on how compassionate am I being in this moment and once that is your aim and you can adopt a compassionate mindset, not only does it help you problem solve, but in a way, instead of getting your happiness or your satisfaction from is the problem there or not, your happiness and satisfaction comes from, is the problem there or not your happiness and satisfaction comes from? Is my heart open or not? And that's amazing because then you have this whole resource and way to access happiness and satisfaction that's not so dependent on circumstances, right, which?

Speaker 1: 39:43

is what we're trained to. We're used to doing it that way. That's so important. I know that the parents listening are also curious in terms of how this is measured in research, and I know you have a scale. Is the scale also available on your website for any parent?

Speaker 2: 39:57

Yes, you can take the scale and I'll give you a score and you can take it over time and see if it changes. Yeah, and so that's still probably the main way people do research is correlating scores with other outcomes, but more and more I think it's the problem with correlation is you can't determine causation. So more and more we might do a mood induction, which means have people think about something that's troubling them and have them write a paragraph of mindfulness and common humanity and kindness and see how that changes.

Speaker 2: 40:28

Or else give them an intervention, actually teach them how to be more self-compassionate, do something like mindful self-compassion, the program and then see how that changes things. And luckily all the evidence converges. The really pretty strong effect sizes in terms of not only mental health but physical health, because, of course, as our mind is calmer, we sleep better, our immune system functions better and we also get better physical health and our relationships improve, work improves, really everything improves. I mean, think about it. Who do you want inside your head? An ally who has your back, or an enemy who's cutting you down at every moment? What's going to be the most conducive environment to make you strong, happy and healthy?

Speaker 1: 41:12

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to get you to figure that one out, I know. But I'm thinking also of differences between moms and dads that I hear about, and how some of the dads are trying to teach their sons or their kids how to be tough on yourself. Are there you are there any gender differences in how, um, in self-compassion, or are there any? Do you have any advice for moms and dads?

Speaker 2: 41:36

Yeah, so so it's. And it's not like biological sex. It's kind of how you're raised, where you raised as a girl or raised as a boy, right? So going back to the fierce and tender self-compassion so fierce self-compassion is about taking action to alleviate suffering. Tender self-compassion is kind of using nurturing and acceptance to alleviate suffering. Both are important. It's like yin and yang and we need them in balance. If we're too much about change and action and we can't be tender, then we're just like always striving and getting almost aggressive. If we're too much about acceptance and don't take action, we're complacent, right. So it's yin and yang. We need both. But if you look at gender role, socialization, boys, they're allowed to take action, they're allowed to be fierce, but they aren't allowed to be tender. So they get the message that somehow it's weak to be in touch with their emotions Right to be soft when the research shows it's the exact opposite.

Speaker 2: 42:28

It makes them a lot stronger. They're much better able to deal with the tough stuff if they can support themselves when things are difficult, as opposed to just shutting down. So people always say girls aren't necessarily allowed to be fierce. There's a little more leeway. A girl can have a little more action, orientation, but too much, and she gets called different names and she's too ambitious or too loud or, you know, like an angry boy. People think, oh, he's so passionate. An angry girl, oh she's crazy. So there are gender roles still shaping, really the ability to balance both, and so that's why when we're self-compassionate, it's like a radical act of authenticity. I'm just going to be my true self, regardless of what society says. I should be like what's true for me.

Speaker 1: 43:17

And that's such an act of self-compassion. I think about the most common email I receive and although I talk about emotion regulation skills in children, the most common email I received which is what led to the shift of Kirsten on was I yell at my child, I go from zero to 100. I don't see it coming and then I feel guilt and I feel shame and I'm stuck in that cycle. Given what we spoke about today, it seems that we should be having this conversation more with parents in terms of self compassion, and that might play into that moment right that they're having, where they don't see themselves go from zero to a hundred.

Speaker 2: 43:51

Yeah, and so I'm going to be totally honest. It's not like that totally goes away, so it's not this is magic dust. It's going to make you into a perfect person and you'll stop being reactive and you'll never snap or yell.

Speaker 1: 44:02

I wish I could say that, but that would mean we wouldn't be human anymore.

Speaker 2: 44:05

Yes, thank you. But what it does do is, um, you know, earlier on in the cycle, if you could like deal with the fact that, while I'm getting really frustrated, and if you can catch yourself and give yourself some compassion, just put like your hand on your heart, like, oh, this is really hard, that can help from um having that blow up. But, really importantly, when the blow up does occur, so you can deal with it two ways. One is oh, I'm terrible, I'm ashamed of myself, and like you, cut yourself down and then that makes you feel worse and then you're more likely to do it again. But it actually can be an opportunity. You know, cause, I'll admit it, I've, I've lost it with my son, you know, and not a lot, but I do.

Speaker 2: 44:47

Occasionally you just model self-compassion. Okay, what I did? I'm really sorry, I was out of line. You know it is human, it happens. But let's you know, here's the steps, proactive steps, I'm going to take to try not to let this happen again. You know, then you've just taught your kid a great lesson about humanity and how to deal with being imperfect. Again, it's about the acceptance I am okay. And then the change is. What can I try to do so that it doesn't happen? What can I learn from this situation, which is such an important lesson to give Right?

Speaker 1: 45:22

I want to be mindful of your time. I've absolutely enjoyed our conversation today. I I just my last question to you is what are you hoping to see in terms of, maybe, where your research would be going in the next five to 10 years and or where we? We spoke a little bit about society and what you'd like to see in society, but what are some changes you'd like to see?

Speaker 2: 45:42

Yeah, so, um, I'm not really doing so much research anymore. I've there's over 7,000 studies at this point. It's like it's kind of boring. We know it's good for us, we know it works. I'm really focused on how to get this out there in the world.

Speaker 1: 45:57

Right.

Speaker 2: 45:58

And that's probably why I started this community. So I've developed training programs, which is great, but I'm realizing that not everyone wants to take a training program or has the time. So what are some other ways we can get self-compassion out there in the world? That really interests me, especially for particular groups, like adapting the exercises for whether it's parents or athletes or whoever we're leaders right, how can we get this out there in the most effective way, and that's just so exciting for me.

Speaker 2: 46:30

And then going on podcasts like this spreading the word. I've always been about spreading the word, but, yeah, I'm just really excited by the ability to really go spend all my attention on finding ways to help people access this life-changing skill.

Speaker 1: 46:49

That's really what lights me up and it truly is life-changing. Thank you for everything that you do and for your book. I will put all the links to the show notes and if you send me that link as well, I'll make sure that everybody knows about the community. Dr Neff, thank you for joining me today.

Speaker 2: 47:04

Thank you, it's been a pleasure.

Speaker 1: 47:06

Thank you to everyone for listening. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast, leave a rating and join us on Instagram at curious underscore neuron. Thank you.